


Call back yesterday, bid time return

by La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Film Noir, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Excessive art deco, Family Drama, Gen, Murder, tw: period-accurate homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 00:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12200049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/pseuds/La%20Reine%20Noire
Summary: Life is never as much fun as it sounds in magazines. Especially not being a private eye.





	Call back yesterday, bid time return

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gehayi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/gifts).



> Thanks to A. for beta-reading. This fic wanted to be much longer than I had time to write, so if there seem to be hints at something bigger, that's why.

In the stories you find in magazines, the case of a lifetime always begins with a gorgeous dame slinking through the door, tears sparkling in her eyes and a throaty voice asking for help. Instead, the woman who walked into my office was my Aunt Ellen who would box my ears if I called her a dame.

 

Life is never as much fun as it sounds in magazines. Especially not being a private eye.

 

"Would I lie to you, Henry?" She and my father are the only people who call me Henry. She'd brought out her best black suit and hat, white-gloved hands carefully folded in her lap. It was the same outfit she'd worn at my uncle's funeral, and it looked horribly out of place in my dingy office. "There's something funny about the way Tommy died."

 

"He was hit by a cab, Aunt Ellen. The driver was drunk and he's in jail." It was all over the papers for a day or two, the Temperance League hollering for more law enforcement to crack down on speakeasies and booze smugglers. There were even protests in front of the Elysium Club since it had the misfortune of being where Uncle Tommy was coming from when the cab hit him. The club had been closed since the accident, out of respect for the dead, but they planned to re-open tonight.

 

"Nobody's asking what Tommy was doing at the Elysium at four in the morning. The cops wouldn't. They didn't know Tommy." She fixed me with a look. "That's why I'm here."

 

It _was_ a bit strange. Uncle Tommy disapproved of the club. He hadn't set foot there since he'd given up liquor eight years ago. I pulled out my notepad. "But before you say anything more, Aunt Ellen, have you told the cops what you're about to tell me?"

 

"I did," said Aunt Ellen before leaning forward in a way that meant nothing good. "The cops are in on it."

 

"Aunt Ellen--"

 

"You shut up for one goddamn minute, Henry, and listen to me."

 

I'd never heard Aunt Ellen swear before. Though I opened my mouth to speak, she held up her hand and continued.

 

"Once you've listened and thought about it, you can call me an interfering old busybody and send me on my way if you don't buy it. But I want five minutes of your undivided attention and I'm willing to pay your hourly rate if needs be." She reached for her purse.

 

"That's enough, Aunt Ellen," I protested, covering my hands with hers. "You talk. I'll listen."

 

"Your uncle was dead before that cab hit him. They wanted it to look like an accident, but it wasn't. He was murdered, Henry. And I need you to find out who did it."

 

I should have known not to take this case. Or maybe I did know, and I should accept what that says about me.

 

***

 

I found myself standing on the sidewalk outside Elysium around half past seven that night, just before the doors were due to open. It doesn't look like much from outside—a block of connected houses, some of which have lampposts and urns and statuary to say that people live there. The largest is on the corner, with tall, narrow windows and pillars flanking the front door, and it belongs to my cousin Richard. His dad was the eldest of seven brothers, mine the third, and Uncle Tommy the youngest. And the club had been the family business as long as our family had existed.

 

There’s a side door on the quieter street whose lights are shuttered, and whose door is painted black. There’s a tiny peephole and a gruff voice demanding a password. This was how it worked even before the Volstead Act passed—according to my grandfather, it was about _exclusivity_. And Richard had taken that to heart.

 

" _Ars longa, vita brevis_ ,” I said, rolling my eyes. Richard was nothing if not predictably pretentious.

 

The door opened, revealing a long, dim corridor. In daylight, it was possible to tell that the paper was dark red with a damask pattern, but in the deep golden glow of the gas lamps, there were only flickering shadows. I followed the corridor to another set of doors, these of polished wood with brass knockers in the shape of skulls.

 

I hadn’t visited the club in almost four years now. Mary and I used to come every few weeks or so, and I could scarcely walk past the door without hearing the echo of her footsteps behind me. I couldn’t even imagine what it was like for Richard, living with the ghosts every single day.

 

But for a second, as the doors to the main stage swung open, I could imagine it.

 

Everyone looked up as they entered Elysium. The ceiling was painted a deep midnight blue spangled with golden stars. It was the one thing Richard had not touched. The heavy velvet drapes and wood paneling had disappeared, replaced by sheer curtains and frosted glass over electric lightbulbs. The entire room looked like the Chrysler Building, which, depending on your point of view, could be a good or a bad thing.

 

The stage was now painted dark red. As I looked at it, the footlights switched on and the house lights dimmed. From somewhere above me, a gramophone recording of a woman's voice echoed as though a ghost were singing.

 

_Stars shining bright above you_

_Night breezes seem to whisper 'I love you'_

_Birds singing in the sycamore tree_

_Dream a little dream of me_

 

That had been Anne’s signature encore, the song she could sing in her sleep, that she would have sung as a lullaby if she and Richard had had any children. Sometimes Mary sang it to the boys; they didn’t care that to us it never sounded right.

  
But this sounded perfect.

 

The room seemed to dissolve around me into the crush of New Year's Eve, the bleary memories of a half-drunk man in love with the perfect woman. Anne stood center stage, one hand snaked around the microphone. If you saw her in a crowd, you'd never look at her twice, but her voice somehow sounded like melted chocolate. Mary's ghost leaned her head on my shoulder, and I could almost smell her perfume mingled with spilled champagne and sweat.

 

_Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you_

_Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you_

_But in your dreams, whatever they be,_

_Dream a little dream of me_

 

There were tears in my eyes when the music faded. Without turning, I said, "Nice to see you too, you bastard."

 

"She would have looked perfect on that stage," said Richard's voice from somewhere above me. The manager's office, most likely. "Every time I look at it, I think how much Anne would have loved the color."

 

"There's a lot you don't think about until it's too late."

 

This time I did turn and look up, quick enough to see him flinch before his head disappeared from the window. I decided to have a look around the place in the meantime. The floor was black, the furniture white with upholstery several shades lighter than the stage. Everything was sleek and silver, modern, designed to attract the deepest pockets in the city. I'm sure my father hated it even as he counted the piles of money it brought in.

 

Richard appeared in the doorway. He wore a perfectly fitted evening suit, but unlike Aunt Ellen, he looked as comfortable dressed to the nines as a man who had just rolled out of bed. He'd always stood out in our family for that. Well, that and other things.

 

"That's for not telling me you had a recording of her all these years," I said.

 

"You never asked," he retorted. Pulling a silver cigarette case out of his pocket, he extracted one and lit it. "I haven't seen you in months, and even when I do, it's business."

 

He wasn't wrong. I sighed. "You know how this place is for me."

 

"Shouldn't be, anymore. Look around you." He held up his arms with an empty smile before taking another drag. "Welcome to the twentieth century, Harry. Bread lines and dust bowls, but at least some of us can drink."

 

"Not all of us," I said. "Not Uncle Tommy."

 

Richard exhaled, not quite a sigh but close. "He wouldn't even if he were alive. May he rest in peace." He bowed his head for a moment.

 

So that's how he was going to play it. "Aunt Ellen thinks he was murdered."

 

Richard didn't look up at first, but I saw his clasped hands tighten. He at least gave me enough credit not to look shocked. "The cops have already been here. I told them what I knew."

 

"Which was?"

 

"You know how Uncle Tommy gets when his wind is up. He was ranting, raving, about the club, about me..." He held up his hands in slow shrug. "We were shutting down for the night; I didn't want him causing a scene, so I had the guys take him outside. Then one of them came running in saying something about a cab. I ran outside and there he was."

 

However I felt about Aunt Ellen, I couldn't blame the cops for wanting to leave this one alone. Uncle Tommy had once had more than a fondness for gin, but he'd found God and sobriety soon after the Volstead Act passed, and hadn't touched a drop since. While that had reduced the damage caused by his temper, the temper underneath hadn't changed a bit. "What did he say to you exactly?"

 

"I'd rather not repeat it, Harry. You'd have thought better of a churchgoing man like Uncle Tommy. I certainly did."

 

He wasn't going to break. This was a man who accepted personal condolences from no fewer than three hundred people at his wife's funeral before locking the doors of the Elysium and systematically destroying every inch of the interior with nothing but his fists and the detritus he'd created. Sure, the rebuilt version became the talk of the town, but it wasn't the Elysium we remembered, the one that had been Anne's.

 

Whatever I might have said, though, died on my tongue as the door opened behind us. It would be cruel to call them the Three Stooges, but I'd never seen them except as a group. Richard's three henchmen, who all had official positions at Elysium. I had no idea how good they were at their day jobs, but I had run across them more than once in their night work. On the books, Bill Bagot was head chef in the kitchen, with John Bushy as his sous-chef. Harry Green was head bartender and queer as a three-dollar bill, which wouldn't have been relevant if he hadn't been fucking Richard on the side.

 

It wasn't as though Richard was subtle about it either. That was never his strong suit.

 

I sighed. "I suppose I should get out of your way."

 

Richard shrugged. "We should do a lot of things, Harry. But we do open in ten minutes, so if you'd like to stay, you can have your pick of any table and your first...five on the house."

 

" _Five_?" I echoed. "How much liquor do you think I need, Richard?"

 

"It's not about need here, Harry," he said, with a smile that chilled my blood. "It's about whatever you want."

 

***

 

I awakened the next morning with a splitting headache. Damn Richard and his invitations.

 

What I didn't expect was to find a fresh pot of coffee and some fresh bread from the bakery down the street when I arrived in the kitchen, or little Ned—he was always little to me, even though he had to be at least twenty by now—reading in the armchair.

 

My grandfather's fifth son was Uncle Ed, who had a son we called Ned to tell them apart. He was the youngest of my group of cousins, and I'd never paid all that much attention to him, but I vaguely remembered that he'd been working for Richard as some sort of pen-pusher, maybe even the one who cooked the books for Elysium's sales of illegal liquor.

 

"Richard asked me to make sure you were still able to stand this morning," he said, holding out a mug of coffee. "He said you hadn't had that much whiskey in a long time."

 

"It was good whiskey," I admitted. "I don't suppose you know where he gets it."

 

Ned looked at the ground.

 

"Don't worry," I assured him. "I'm not going to make you give anything away. If Richard thought I was going to do that, he'd have sent someone else." I took a sip, scalding my tongue. It was worth it. "You make very good coffee, Ned."

 

He looked surprised, then grinned. "I've got my uses."

 

"Don't sell yourself short." It was all too easy to forget yourself around Richard, to morph into one of the dozens of acquaintances who basked in his attention and wilted when he turned away. "You're a smart guy. That much seems clear."

 

"Tell that to my dad. He might believe you." Ned took a big sip of coffee and I followed suit, wondering as I did how rude it would be to add a shot of moonshine. "He always wished I was more like you."

 

"Hell no," I said before I could think about it. "I'm surprised. I thought my father complained about me all the time."

 

"He does. Dad thinks it's all a crock of shit." The grin he gave me was full of mischief for a second before he remembered whatever it was that was eating at him. I sat back and waited, sipping my coffee slowly. To his credit, he finished drinking his, stood up, and bid me farewell.

 

He'd barely left when the doorman buzzed me to say I had a telegram. There was only one person I knew who still sent telegrams.

 

***

 

There are some invitations you wish you just missed. That you hadn't even seen them, that you could pretend they didn't exist.

 

Any invitation from my father fell into that category. If you could even call them invitations.

 

He didn't even turn away from the window when I stepped into his study. The brim of his hat shaded his face except for the red glowing end of the cigarette he was smoking. "You're poking your nose into Thomas' death and I want you to stop."

 

"Good evening to you too, Father." I took a few steps closer. "You know you're the third person who's tried to warn me off this case. Almost makes me think there might be something in it."

 

"You were at the club last night. You know what goes on there." He turned. His eyes stared straight through people, even—maybe especially—his children. Richard was the only person I knew who could withstand it, but he wasn't like other people. "Thomas threatened to tell the Feds. I would have reasoned with him, but he went straight to Richard and, presumably, got himself thrown out."

 

"And then the cab hit him."

 

He pressed the cigarette into a marble ashtray on the windowsill. "Presumably."

 

"Don't you care?" I tried to keep the disbelief from my voice. "He was your brother."

 

"He threatened all of us with his foolishness," he snapped. "I see Ellen's spoken to you, then."

 

"She came to you too." I expected no less. And my father still considered himself enough of a gentleman that he'd never throw Aunt Ellen out, even if he wanted to. "Did you believe her?"

 

"Even if I did, it doesn't matter." Hands clasped behind his back, he began to pace from the window to his desk. "There are too many larger pieces at play. We had to start selling liquor again or we would have lost our entire clientele. Thomas never approved, but I didn't think he'd go that far."

 

"Do you think Richard killed him?" It wouldn't have occurred to me to imagine my cousin as a killer. I'd always thought that would be my burden to bear alone. He had gone to Dartmouth while I had my education at the Western Front in Belgium.

 

My father stopped pacing. "No."

 

I half-exhaled.

 

"Not with his own hands," he continued. "But I don't doubt for an instant that he was involved, and if this were to be prosecuted, Henry, we would all lose everything. So I am telling you, as your father, to drop it."

 

He wasn't even asking. I shoved my hands into the pocket of my coat. "Then you can tell Aunt Ellen. I'm not doing it."

 

Without waiting for his response, I turned on my heel and left the room.  


***

 

It started pouring rain soon after I reached my apartment, which scotched my plans to go back to Elysium to confront Richard, at least for the moment. I knew him well enough to know he wouldn't take me seriously if I showed up looking like a drowned rat.

 

I sat down at the table and started to write down the facts that I knew. I'd only got as far as Uncle Tommy's probable time of death when I heard a knock on the door.

 

Ned was soaked to the skin, his glasses fogged up beneath a dripping hat. "Can I talk to you? It's important."

 

"Sure." I stepped back to let him in. "Just hang your wet things over there. The radiator may not help but it won't hurt."

 

Ned stripped out of his jacket and hat, shaking his hair like a dog. "That storm came out of nowhere."

 

"Want a drink?"

 

"Try ten."

 

I laughed. "I can't promise Richard's quality, but I've got a bit of moonshine hidden at the back of the cabinet. Or I can make you coffee."

 

"Coffee, please. You know he'd let you have whatever you wanted." Ned sounded surprised. "He likes you, Harry. He may not be good at showing it, but he does."

 

I busied myself with the coffee while Ned talked idly about the new singer Richard had just hired. "She's a good singer. She _is_. She just..."

 

"She isn't Anne."

 

He shook his head. "She isn't. And you know Richard. Where Anne is concerned, he's an open book."

 

"For better or worse," I agreed. After setting a steaming mug in front of him, I settled in the other chair. "Ned, I know I promised not to ask too many questions, but there is something. I spoke to my father and he said Uncle Tommy threatened to expose Richard to the Feds."

 

Ned immediately looked down at his coffee, clasping his hands together around the mug.

 

"Is this true? Ned, were you there?"

 

"You didn't hear what he said." Ned's voice was so soft I could barely hear it. "He was saying awful things. Hateful things."

 

"Like what?"

 

"He called him...catamite--cocksucker--said Grandfather would be ashamed. Richard just laughed. He said 'That's the difference between you and me. I'm not ashamed of any of it.' Uncle Tommy lunged at him and Richard ducked out of the way, but Uncle Tommy was moving too fast..." Ned's eyes fixed on the large pane of frosted glass.

 

"He went through the window." I buried my face in my hands. "Fuck."

 

Ned nodded. "We ran downstairs. He didn't have a pulse. The back of his head was..." He shuddered. "Richard sent Bagot to find Detective Mowbray and tell him what happened. The cab was Mowbray's idea."

 

It was a good idea; had to hand it to Mowbray. No reason for cops to search the premises if Uncle Tommy had died on the street. Richard's thousands of dollars of illegal liquor—not to mention Mowbray's cut of the profits—would be safe from prying eyes.

 

"Richard didn't kill him, Harry. It was an accident. A stupid goddamn accident."

 

"But Richard helped to cover it up," I replied. "And however you or I may feel about it personally, he _is_ breaking the law."

 

Ned grabbed my arm. "He'll go to jail, Harry," he said, his voice low and rough. "You know he'd never survive there. You've got to help him."

 

"What do I need to do?"

 

"Nothing." I must have made a face, because he grabbed my hands over the table, nearly overturning his mug. "I mean that, Harry. Just tell Aunt Ellen it was an accident. It's the truth. You know that now."

 

"She'd never believe me. Come on, Ned. You know her just as well as I do. She'd smell a rat the second I opened my mouth."

 

"Then convince her to keep quiet about it. It's for the family."

 

That was what my father always said. _For the family_.

 

Ned was right. Richard wouldn't survive a jail sentence. We'd all but grown up together; our wives had been best friends. And it _had_ been an accident, if what Ned said was true. What was a little illegal hooch between friends, right?

 

But Uncle Tommy was still dead. Aunt Ellen was still alone. _Find out who did it_. Well, I'd done that. Uncle Tommy did it his own damn self with help from Richard.

 

"Fine." I disentangled my hands from his. "I can't make promises for Aunt Ellen, but I'll talk to her."

 

"You're doing the right thing, Harry."

 

"Funny how it doesn't feel that way."

 

It wasn't funny at all, and Ned seemed to know it.

 

***

 

Aunt Ellen didn't say anything at first. She slumped a little in the chair, then a bit more, her head falling into her hands. When I called her name, she just shook her head. "They're still saying it was an accident."

 

"Ned was there and I believe him."

 

"He's head over heels in love with Richard. He'll never say or think a thing against him." Aunt Ellen looked up at me, tears in her eyes. "For the family. Is that what they all told you?"

 

I nodded.

 

"Oh, my boy, you'll see soon enough. This family will suck all the goodness out of you, just like it did with my Tommy." She stood up, pushing my hand aside, and started toward the door. Then she paused, one hand on the frame. "I've seen you with other customers of yours, Harry. You always tell them to be sure before they hire you, that they may find out something they don't want to know. But you didn't do that with me."

 

She was right. "I didn't think you'd listen."

 

For a moment, a smile lit her face. "You're right. Tommy used to complain about that too."

 

"He complained about everything, Aunt Ellen."

 

"Well, he isn't anymore." She looked briefly up at the ceiling. "I hope they're happy with the price they've paid."

 

I didn't know what to say to that, so I waited in silence until the echo of her footsteps faded into the dusk.

**Author's Note:**

> The version of “Dream a Little Dream of Me” that I had on repeat when writing the bits with Anne is [Margot Bingham’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwuzr7JV1x4), perhaps best known from Boardwalk Empire, and which apparently also appears in a video game called Battlefield 1. Strictly speaking, I'm cheating by including it in this fic since it wasn't written until 1931, but I love the song, so...


End file.
